


Noose

by kangeiko



Category: Carnivale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-21
Updated: 2006-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Dora Mae can't breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noose

**Author's Note:**

> Set pre-Babylon, but knowledge of it is probably helpful.

  
Sometimes, Dora Mae can't breathe. Not often, and leastways not badly enough to beg off showtime, but enough to scare her. It don't feel like she's got any more dust in her than anyone else - but what about that boy, Hawkins? Didn't his ma pass from it? - maybe so, maybe not. It's not like she's got anyone to ask. She daren't mention it to Rita Sue, or to her daddy, 'cause they'd just worry. And Libby? Forget it.

When Dora Mae was a little one, she and Libby had been real close. Like proper sisters, holding hands and everything. They'd even looked alike. Then Dora Mae grew up and filled out, and Libby... didn't. Libby stayed small and skinny, barely 'nough for a boy, and Dora Mae knew, she _knew_ that there weren't nothing she could do to fix it. To fix either of them. Dora Mae grew up and filled out, and Libby took to watching her with malice in her eyes, like it were Dora Mae's fault that Libby didn't have no titties. Like it were Dora Mae's fault that she took after her ma, and Libby didn't.

Like it were Dora Mae's fault that Libby weren't Dora Mae.

Back when the two of them were little ones, hanging about their ma's skirts, they'd curl up together in one of the single beds of the trailers. They'd talk about how fine it would be to have silks and pretties, and to dance because you wanted to, not because you had to. Back then, the dust hadn't risen and the land was still unswallowed and green, and damned tempting for two little ones. Maybe she's misremembering, but Dora Mae reckons that the Carnival itself had been younger then, with more children running around and getting underfoot. Now, 'twere just her and Libby, and Sofie - though she didn't really know Sofie; who did? - and that was all. Hadn't there been others? Weren't there others now? Dora Mae isn't sure. Maybe. Maybe some of the workmen had little ones that she'd never noticed, or maybe there was something odd about dragging your kiddies around with you, up and down the country, and no end in sight. The Carnival ate them, Dora Mae thinks, heretical and unrepentant. 'Tweren't right to bite the hand that feeds you, and certainly not with such nonsense as the small-town folk came up with. Such stupid notions going around, stirring up trouble against carni folk, and where would they be if even their own started spreading them?

The Carnival ate them, Dora Mae thinks again. Where else could they be? Did they all leave? All the little ones, 'cept her and Libby and Sofie. Somehow, they'd all up and left, or disappeared into the dust, and they were all old now. The truth was Dora Mae couldn't come up with a way to make 'em all young again without having little ones of her own and someone to pay for them. She wasn't sure she was ready for that yet. Leastways, not when she wasn't sure that the dust wouldn't take her.

She worries that she's fretting over something that can't be helped, and maybe it's true. Maybe she should go to Sofie's trailer after one of her shows and get her palm read.

Sometimes, Dora Mae can't breathe, and those times are coming oftener and oftener.

She thinks, maybe I don't need to go to Sofie. Maybe not yet. After Babylon, she thinks, then looks at her hands. They are dry and coated with dust, as if she has been working at the fields rather than at her bed, and Dora Mae does not want to go to Sofie at all. Her hands tell it all: dead skin, bones broken like dry sticks, and the noose of the Dustbowl tightening, tightening.

*

fin


End file.
